Circle’s USDC, the second-largest stablecoin on the market, rose to a record market capitalization over $56 billion this week as stablecoin growth showed signs of reaccelerating. USDC added $10.2 billion to its market cap over the past month, driven primarily by rising Solana-based DeFi trading volumes, Artemis data shows. That’s more than double the $4.6 … Read more
President Donald Trump is just about done naming the key figures he’s seeking to get into financial regulation posts that will direct the future oversight of the crypto industry, now including lawyer Jonathan Gould as a nominee to run the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency that oversees U.S. national banks. With a widely … Read more
Franklin Templeton has made the OnChain U.S. Government Money Market Fund (FOBXX), the third-largest tokenized money market fund, available on Solana in another signal of growing interest in the blockchain. The fund is already available on Ethereum, Coinbase’s Base, Aptos and Avalanche, which were all added last year. The Stellar network functions as the primary … Read more
Bitcoin Twitter (or Bitcoin X) is having a moment after a 13F filing by Goldman Sachs (GS) disclosed higher stakes in a handful of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), but the facts are less than meets the eye. First and foremost, ownership of the ETFs isn’t exactly a bet by the Goldman trading floor on … Read more
If you asked a cypherpunk in the 1990s about their worst-case scenario for the future of money, they probably would have described something very close to Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs). The fight against financial surveillance was fundamental for Bitcoin’s early instigators, and CBDCs go against everything they stand for: privacy, decentralization and individual sovereignty. … Read more
The fourth quarter was a good one for crypto and Wall Street analysts expect leading U.S. exchange Coinbase (COIN) to have posted a big jump in earnings from the prior three months. Revenue for the fourth quarter is expected to have been $1.8 billion, according to FactSet, up from $1.26 billion in the third quarter. … Read more
Loans from Galaxy and Ripple played a pivotal role in helping crypto exchange MoonPay handle the demand stemming from the launch of Donald Trump’s official memecoin after its Jan.18 issuance, a new podcast reveals. TRUMP launched days before the President’s swearing-in ceremony. The token launch was a surprise move that made him the first-ever president … Read more
A soft U.S. inflation report later Wednesday will likely bode well for risk assets, including bitcoin (BTC). But those expecting bullish fireworks may be disappointed. The Labor Department will publish January’s consumer price index (CPI) report on Wednesday at 13:30 UTC. It’s expected to show that the cost of living increased by 0.3% month-on-month in … Read more
Brian Quintenz, a one-time commissioner with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Andreessen Horowitz’s head of policy, will be Donald Trump’s choice to run the federal commodities regulator. Quintenz previously served in the regulator between 2017 and 2021, where he organized the Technology Advisory Committee. During his time as commissioner, he said a self-regulatory organization … Read more
EMBARGO Feb 12 9 AM HK TIME Fireblocks, a provider of crypto custodian technology, said it added support for Sony’s Soneium blockchain, an Ethereum layer-2 network that aims to bridge the conventional internet, or Web2, and the emerging, blockchain-based Web3. Fireblocks counts many large institutions among its clients, including large banks. Crypto custodians, which provide … Read more